The present invention relates to a conductor arrangement for a resistive switching element.
Electrical energy is transported from the generator to the consumers in electrical power supply systems. In this case, shorts must be avoided since they can lead to irreparable damage to installations. One possible way to avoid shorts in electrical power supply systems is to use so-called short-circuit current limiters.
One particularly advantageous form with respect to the switching characteristics and costs in operation is that of superconducting short-circuit current limiters. Because of the superconduction, these have no power losses, or only very minor power losses, in operation, and are distinguished by their rapid, reversible switching. Their functional principle is based on a superconducting arrangement changing from the superconducting state to the normally conductive state when a short-circuit current occurs. The superconducting arrangement which is connected in series in the power supply system switches a resistance to the power supply system very quickly as a result of this change, limiting the short-circuit current. The power supply system and the installations connected to it are therefore protected against the short-circuit current. Once the short-circuit current has decayed, the short-circuit current limiter is able to remove the additional resistance from the power supply system again because, after it has cooled down below a critical temperature, the superconducting arrangement changes back from the normally conductive state to the superconducting state. This once again allows electrical power to be transmitted with virtually no losses via the current limiter in the power supply system.
Superconducting short-circuit current limiters with superconducting coils wound in a bifilar form alongside one another are known from the related art, for example from U.S. Pat. No. 6,275,365 B1. A coil is in each case formed from a conductor ribbon which has two conductor parts and is wound around a cylindrical coil core. The conductor ribbon is folded over itself, resulting in the two adjacent conductor parts, and each conductor part is electrically isolated from an adjacent conductor part by an insulator layer. Adjacent coils are wound at different positions along the axis of the cylindrical coil core. The adjacent coils may be connected in parallel with one another. However, this results in problems relating to the withstand voltage of the coils. The total voltage applied to a coil is in this design dropped across the two outer turns. In the case of rated voltages, in particular those which are greater than 10 kV, the inductances, the losses and the space required are very large because of the separations required between the conductor parts.